[SOLVED] Dual-boot help

[Skooter]

I'm yet another trying to dual-boot win xp and Ubuntu, but I have a few questions/issues...

My HDD is already split; two partitions, one makes up drive F:\. Both are about 149 GB. I have already transferred all data off of F:\, anticipating Linux, but when I go to install Linux, it gives me this partition table I don't know what to do with. There are 3 options, but I think I would want "manual" for what I'm trying to do, yeah? Or no? If I do that, select the F:\ partition, then click on "edit Partition", it has a screen saying "use as" and "mount point", which would be /boot, right? So what do I choose under "use as"? ext3?Also, what does "swap area" mean?

Or do I select one of the other two options for partition?

Or am I better off with a VM like Virtualbox?

Thanks in advance!

[Touchtecservers]

You could always try VMWare or Virtualbox first, or even run a Live Linux CD (google for Linux Live CDs - various distributions offer them) - a sort of "try before you commit" approach

I suggest backing up all information though first - Just in case, then at least you have peace of mind, and thats always good

Your best bet if you want to install then though, is to use the windows partition manager thing to delete the F drive, so that its just clear space. Then you can go into the linux install, and just select the free space to create a new partition. Leave about 500-1GB space "free" on the drive. Mount it as / (root), and use either ext3 or reiserfs (i prefer reiser, but they make very little difference tbh).

With that free space you left, you will create a "swap partition". Swap is linux's version of the Pagefile that windows uses.

Hope this is some help.

[jayd512]

Hello and Welcome!

Choose manual installation. Tell Linux installer to install on the un-used partition. If you happen to use it all as one Linux Partition, then choose to mount it as /. Or you could split that up, and use half for / and the other half for /home.
As far as the swap, check this link. So depending on your machines spec, 512 MB or 1 GB should do you nicely.

[Jonathan183]

Partition resize/delete can be done from the Ubuntu live CD.
You need to use manual partitioning because the default will try to use the whole hard drive ... boot from the live CD, open a terminal and post the output of

sudo fdisk -l

if you want additional advice ... we can then see the existing disk partition structure.

[vickey_20]

you can easily dual boot you PC with ubuntu and xp. I think as you have already left some space for linux in f:\ , when prompted to install linux select the option install in free space.
We can guide you through manual partition if you prefer it, for that please post the screen shot of you partition table by issuing the command 'fdisk -l' on the terminal.

[Skooter]

I am so sorry... I already figured it out.... Found a guide and went with it. Totally fogot that I started this thread, I've been having so much fun with my new toy....

Thanks anyway!

[Jonathan183]

Glad your sorted ... could you post a link to the guide that helped you and mark the thread solved so others can use the same solution ...